Writing 'We Are Never Getting Back Together' was one of the most hilarious experiences I have ever had in the studio because it just happened so naturally.
My worst job ever, this was when I was a kid, was picking potatoes on the back of a trailer in March. It was freezing, absolutely freezing. We had to sort the good ones from the bad ones. Once you do that for a day in March in the north of England, it makes you think there must be better jobs than this!
You had to know how to fight or you had to know how to avoid a fight. I didn't enjoy fighting, so I learned how to avoid them.
The road had the lonely times, but I kept myself busy.
I was 37 when my father died-and I no longer had any freedom of choice over what I would do with the rest of my life.
When I was a child I thought I saw an angel. It had wings and kinda looked like my sister. I opened the door so some light could come into the room, and it sort of faded away. My mother said it was probably my Guardian Angel.
My father Bill had a problem with Christmas. Although he appears in old photographs to possess a whippy, muscular frame, he was actually a frail man and usually managed to cause some kind of drama just before the festivities began.
Stripe is building payment infrastructure for the Web, so we make it easy to accept credit cards online. Before Stripe, the way you'd do this is using the legacy banking structure. It was slow, it was complex, it was expensive. It had this very chilling effect on e-commerce.
Nothing is impossible; there are ways that lead to everything, and if we had sufficient will we should always have sufficient means. It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible.
Later in that administration, I was asked to take a job which I had to turn down as Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs because we were just then putting together the merger of two small law firms that became this law firm. I couldn't leave them at that point.
I watched a lot of television as a kid, and the suburbs to me - that was exotic! Like, a mom and dad who lived in the same house and had jobs and cooked breakfast at the same time every morning and did laundry in a washing machine and dryer? That was like, 'Woah! Who are they? How do you get to be like that?'
Radio has had my back since 'Missin' You Crazy,' which was a very traditional kind of song.
Uncle Brett had a definite vision that he was after, I don't think having a famous father affected him much.
Right after 9/11 there was a magazine with a cover of kids, mostly 12-14 year-olds, who were being trained for military combat. I thought that this had just gone too far.
At the age of eight, I auditioned for 'The Sound of Music' and made it through to the third round, where we all stood in a row like the Von Trapp family and had to sing.
I lose tons of stuff on the cutting room floor. For Scary Movie 3, for example, we had a lot of Matrix spoofs, a Hulk scene, and some of that stuff just doesn't hold up - it's too much plot, audiences just didn't want to hear about it.
People take pictures of the Summer, just in case someone thought they had missed it, and to proved that it really existed.
I've always had an inquisitive mind about everything from flowers to television sets to motor cars. Always pulled them apart - couldn't put 'em back, but always extremely interested in how things work.
In 2012, I received a phone call from the family of Arsala Rahmani, the Afghan senator with whom I'd become friendly. That morning, a gunman had pulled up alongside Rahmani's vehicle, idling in a crowded intersection, and shot him point blank.
I concluded that all religions had the same foundation - a belief in the supernatural - a power above nature that man could influence by worship - by sacrifice and prayer.
I loved all those classic figures from the '30s and '40s... Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Humphrey Bogart, Rita Hayworth. They had such glamour and style. I loved the movies of those times too - so much attention paid to details, lights, clothing, the way the studios would develop talent.
Before, models had that rock star life and it was all about going to the parties and having that glamorous life, and I think these days, models are more like businesswomen and the whole industry takes it really serious.
I'm an off-the-charts introvert. To me, being around groups of strangers is exhausting. I've had to sort of train myself to think about two tactics: finding common ground and invoking humor.
When I worked with Billie Jean King and Craig Kardon, and we would be working on something, Billie would show up and say, 'What about this?' Neither one of us had seen it.
I was one of those kids who had never seen an indie film before I got to college. If it wasn't a big, huge tentpole movie, or if it wasn't on the radio, I hadn't experienced it.
I wish I had never taken naked pictures of myself on a phone to send to a girl. It's the worst thing ever.
By the time I was at college, I became very alert to the question of racial discrimination, and I remember one of my first writing attempts had to do with a lynching.
I never had any backlash from the model-turned-actor thing.
When I went to Paris, I had a lot of ideas about it that were formed in the sort of ether that flows about if you watch too many recent Woody Allen movies or took French classes as a kid. I was certainly full of those.
My marriage had been impulsive. That marriage should have been short-lived instead of the 23 years it spanned.
Middle Eastern cuisine has the same depth of ingredients and processes as other cuisines. They just haven't had as much exposure.
Oh, my only - if I had one frustration in being on 'West Wing' is I wasn't on it enough, because I was in and out.
We've got so many different cultural groups in my family that I've had to learn to accommodate them in different ways. My father speaks different to my mum. My mum speaks different to my grandmother. Everybody speaks different, so you find you start tweaking your language to be more accessible to people.
I was modeling since I was four and acting in commercials since I was five - this was when I was in New York. I then moved to LA when I was 16... but before that I had done a play on Broadway.
Now supposing I had the part of a young woman to give out, one that wanted some excellent acting. If I were to go to the stage for my actress I would have to take a matured woman, one who would act splendidly, but who would look too old for the requirements.
I had to jump out of a plane! The shoot was for an editorial for a magazine; and it called for skydiving.
